By Róise Collins
DRIVERS in Donegal are the least likely to have penalty points on their driving licence when compared to motorists from any other county in Ireland.
Just over one in ten of all drivers from Donegal have been detected committing a road traffic offence, recent figures from the Road Safety Authority (RSA) have revealed.
The figures relating to penalty point offences from the RSA show that 11.5 per cent of all licence holders in the county have penalty points recorded against them at the end of December 2022.
Other counties in border areas have also recorded low rates of drivers with penalty points on their licences.
In Sligo 11.8 per cent of drivers have one or more penalty points, followed by Leitrim where the figure is 12.3 per cent.
Whereas, drivers from Offaly were ranked as most likely to have points on their driving licence when compared to every other county in Ireland. Almost one in five drivers in the county have penalty points recorded against them.
Nationwide, a total of 498,919 holders of an Irish licence had at least one penalty point recorded against them by the end of the year, this represents 15 per cent of all Irish motorists.
However the total number of motoring offences resulting in penalty points has fallen by over 22,000 or 10.5 per cent since 2021.
Speeding continues to remain the most common penalty point offence, although it has also decreased by nine per cent from 2021 levels.
The second most common offence is driving whilst using a phone, this saw an even larger drop of close to 25 per cent.
However one of the penalty point offences that did increase in the same period was the number of unaccompanied learner drivers.
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